Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One Spoiler Review: A Masterpiece Of Action Filmmaking

Early in the greatest film of all time, "Singin' in the Rain," Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) describes to a fawning group of fans his rise to fame in Hollywood. Part of that rise includes his career as a stuntman, from bar-fight scenes to more elaborate gags. In one stunt, Don puts on racing goggles, rides atop a motorcycle and sends it right over a huge cliff. If you watch "Singin' in the Rain" enough times, you may ask what type of movie would require that kind of stunt. Seven-plus decades later, with the action masterpiece "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One," we finally have the answer.

It is an unassailable truth that a few handfuls of images are among the greatest ever captured on film. Some examples: Kelly dancing with an umbrella on a rainy street at night. Mickey Mouse commanding the stars with the power of a sorcerer at his disposal. Marlon Brando's tank-top-wearing lout screaming to the heavens for his wife. Oh yes, and Tom Cruise running for his life and/or to save the lives of those around him, speaking not only to Cruise's intense and remarkable physicality but to an innate choice to always be the selfless hero.

Tom Cruise was born to run. He doesn't just run like hell in the "Mission: Impossible" films, but it's no accident that to commemorate his 61st birthday earlier this month, Paramount Pictures put together a supercut of his running in the franchise. Tom Cruise is one of our last living true-blue movie stars, and it's been more than 25 years since he helped create out of whole cloth a series that has ensured his presence on the Mount Rushmore of action heroes.

Yes, "Mission: Impossible" existed as a TV series decades before the opening film released in 1996, but Cruise – whose producing effort is not coincidentally the Brian de Palma film that kickstarted the franchise – was quite nakedly attempting to become an American James Bond. It got to the point where the actors from the TV series loudly criticized the film for running so far from the source material, including turning the show's lead into a villain who's killed off gruesomely. But that tracks, because Tom Cruise was born to run.

Ethan can't be a ghost, because his past hovers over him more than ever. When he receives his first mission, he's greeted by the all-too-familiar voice of current CIA Director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny, making a very welcome return). All Kittridge tells Ethan is that his old friend Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) has absconded with one-half of a key and is looking to sell it to someone who owns the other half. Who has the other half? What does the key open? What does this mystery item do once unlocked? Answers are scarce, but bounty hunters are after Ilsa and the key in the Middle East, so Ethan has to get there first.

Choosing to do so – because of course Ethan does choose to help, and does get there first – creates complications. Aside from his voice, Kittridge is first seen meeting with other members of the intelligence community (portrayed by Rob Delaney, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss, and Charles Parnell). All of them have a better sense of the power of the two-part key, something that feels more disturbing with the images of Russian sailors floating in our minds just as they floated under a glacier. As mysterious as their conversation is, it also turns funny –- this film is often very funny –- when the Director of National Intelligence (Cary Elwes) learns about the presence of the IMF for the first time and that Ethan's identity is classified even to him.

But Kittridge knows Ethan, enabling the latter to calmly enter this covert meeting and neutralize it by knocking everyone else out with a smoke bomb. The ensuing conversation is all the more thrilling if you've watched the original recently. There's the joy of watching Tom Cruise and Henry Czerny sharing another tense conversation, echoing the confrontation from the original at a restaurant with an opulent aquarium. (It's equally joyous to hear Kittridge once again tell Ethan "I understand you're upset.") There's even the delight of how McQuarrie cuts to the opening credits, as Kittridge realizes Ethan can only escape their current conversation by wearing a mask ... of Eugene Kittridge.

Kidding aside, the true reckoning of this film is Ethan's, with deep and powerful echoes to his past throughout. The most powerful comes courtesy of the aforementioned Gabriel. We don't yet know Gabriel's full history, but we do know that Gabriel and Ethan had a run-in of some kind before Ethan joined the IMF, and that Gabriel killed some woman (Mariela Garriga) close to Ethan.

Death is no stranger to Ethan Hunt even if he's escaped it directly for decades. When Kittridge notes that the mission will "cost you dearly," it's like he's a seer. Ethan has visited Kittridge because our hero has learned that the bounty on Ilsa's head was placed on her ... by Kittridge himself, as a way to get American hands on the key. Though Ilsa doesn't die there, her life soon hangs in the balance, because Gabriel and the Entity force Ethan to make a choice.

Tom Cruise and Ethan Hunt often feel interchangeable, and the threats represented in the series feel like manifestations of his current psyche, so it makes sense that artificial intelligence like the Entity is the bad guy now. (The apocryphal story of Cruise pushing back against a CG version of himself doing stunts in "Ghost Protocol," in which he purportedly said "there is no digital Tom," seems awfully relevant now.) For Ethan, the Entity is as primal and existential a threat as possible, undoing all the potential good the IMF can do and reigning over all world governments.

The sight of Gabriel in Abu Dhabi makes Ethan abort the mission, which speaks to how terrifying the former must be to the latter. Ethan would rather risk losing Grace and regrouping in Rome. Once there, Ethan only gets Grace out of police custody to take her on the run in a novel, thrilling, and hilarious car chase in which –- thanks to some ill-placed handcuffs –- she has to drive with his guidance. (Cruise is assured as ever, but it's when he gets to be funny, as when expressing a good deal of agita at her shaky driving skills, that he can be most enjoyable.) The challenge of the chase is that Gabriel's henchwoman Paris (Pom Klementieff) is a true psychopath, gleefully laughing as she takes an Italian police truck and rams into any and all innocent cars in her way. The chase concludes much the way the first section did –- with Grace evading Ethan's grasp once more, and Ethan forced to regroup, this time with Luther, Benji, and Ilsa taking him to Venice.

In Venice, Ethan is eventually presented with an impossible choice: either Grace or Ilsa has to die. He and his team meet the person who wants to sell the two-part key: Alana Mitsopolis (Vanessa Kirby), who realizes with everyone else that the nighttime rave they're attending was set up by the Entity. The echoes from the first "Mission: Impossible" are at their loudest here. Yes, there is the return of Kittridge, and sly references to the hacker nicknames Luther sported when he was a younger man.

But the most emotionally intense sequence in the original comes when a young Ethan tries and fails to save his team from sabotage, especially the lovely Sarah (Kristin Scott Thomas), who's stabbed to death by an offscreen attacker. The mirror image comes after Ethan tries to save both Grace and Ilsa. Yet he finally, after so many years of protecting those around him, loses someone: Ilsa. The sword fight between her and Gabriel teased in the trailer, coming at night on Venice's deserted bridges, is pitched at an almost operatic level (Lorne Balfe's score, throughout, is as solid as you can get). And it ends with tragedy, as Gabriel stabs her and leaves the scene before Ethan can get to her. Another immensely talented agent, who was as close to a lover as Ethan had ever had, and now gone.

The line that Cruise and McQuarrie walk here is precise and careful: the "Mission: Impossible" films do not work because they are brooding, grimdark affairs. They work because they are breathless, rollicking, suspenseful adventures. So even with the immense loss of Ilsa weighing on Ethan, Luther, and Benji, they frame her sacrifice as something that can enable their mission. When Grace takes the blame, noting that if it wasn't for her, Ilsa wouldn't be dead, Luther reverses it: Ilsa chose to ensure that Grace could survive. Because this film is all about choices, Grace is given the biggest one of all: to join the team, and not just because they need her for this one. We can talk about how the first "Mission: Impossible" is an origin story for Ethan Hunt, but we already meet him as an IMF agent. With "Dead Reckoning," we have something of an origin story for how an IMF agent is made, as Grace accepts the mission.

Grace, of course, accepts, as she and Ethan break into the Orient Express as it zooms through the Alps. The intent is for her to don a mask as Alana, intercepting the two halves of the key and learning from the buyer what it opens. As ever, the plan has immediate complications. The first and most pressing is that Gabriel is on the train, too, and he knows Ethan wants to be there too. So Gabriel takes out the engine workers and disables the train's brakes, meaning Ethan can't hop onto the train via motorcycle.